Jorpho wrote:95DosBox wrote:I would think the reason it hasn't been done is no one during that time when Sound Blaster was dominant would choose to create one when an actual hardware device was capable of doing it.
At the time the hardware was both extremely popular and very expensive. Someone who could manage it in software would have made a bundle.
Jorpho you are missing the point it wasn't that expensive. I think the Sound Blaster when I first bought it cost me around $160 with my own money at Softwarehouse which later became known as CompUSA. In comparison most computers back in the day could cost close to $2,000 or more fully assembled and didn't usually have sound cards.
Also you had the ability to not just output sound but also record it which became useful and it did include a gameport which I used for older DOS games back in the day with a Gravis joystick. A SB DOS emulator made for a 386 computer at the time would not have been wise to do and there would have been no such killing possible. The processing power would have slowed down the game to a crawl and not to mention the copyright law suits that would ensue for making it Sound Blaster compatible back in the day. Even Adlib the predecessor to the Sound Blaster couldn't compete with it.
Today with DOSBOX around it seems unlikely Creative Labs would all of a sudden be bringing down the house and suing some freeware team for creating it for Pure DOS which now today has computers with the necessary CPU power to emulate it properly and the 1MB->4GB region should be enough storage space to house the entire program although I kind of think it wouldn't take even close to 1GB of memory for the program but until the program is done we will never know. DOSBOX is rather small but it utilizes a lot of Windows files I'm sure and I'm not sure if DOSBOX had been a standalone Windows program how much larger it would have become.
As modern computers now have the processing power and the necessary memory storage
This does not circumvent the issue that DOS in itself is inherently a single-tasking operating system. If you started trying to build some kind of multi-tasking environment – which is probably what you'd need if you started having to write stuff to the parallel port or to the PC speaker while running a different game - you would end up with something not very different from DOSBox in HX DOS Extender.
At the moment I never considered or was interested in making a true Multitasking environment and someone mentioned that the HX DOS Extender project programmer might be dead which I hope is not true if there is some potential there. DOS has always been limited to a single task operating system. However if the SB DOS emulator could be done and completed today you could use perhaps test multitasking using Desqview-X to tap into that virtual DOS SB emulation piped through your PC internal speaker. Just because DOS is a single task OS doesn't mean the project isn't worth doing. How often are you going to be playing two or more DOS games simultaneously anyhow and the CPU will be geared toward just the DOS game and the DOS SB emulation instead of a Windows OS overhead it has to deal with or any seriously bloated code. This would also avoid any OS licensing issues or OS space consumption. And on the subject of performance you do realize that DOS games that ran under pure DOS on a 386 12MHz probably required an equivalent of a Pentium 4 1GHz to be on par.
Could you explain why are referring to writing stuff to the parallel port? Was there some specific sound card device that you used that ran on the LPT1? I do recall Covox or some Disney sound device might have used it but I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible where you are using built in sound output devices such as the PC internal speaker or using the built in HDMI audio output chip found on the Intel HD Graphics, AMD, or nVidia so you wouldn't need to buy additional hardware or need to use an additional internal PCIe slot. Plus in addition the HDMI audio output solution would take care of video and audio in one cable and have superior audio and video quality. So having the choice between the PC internal speaker for the SB emulation or via the HDMI audio output of commonly found video devices is a better idea.
How long did it take DosBox to finish? I think it was about 5 years from version 0.50 to stable 0.72. I'm not sure how long it was worked on prior to 0.50 or what the initial beta version number was first released.
Oh, well, I'm sure it will go faster with the right people on the "team". 😜
Was that a subtle hint of volunteering? 😵 That's the dilemma. Who has the knowledge to do it? Can a single individual do it or a team? This will be the holy grail of DOS when it finally has been achieved. Once it is done all DOS games will be forever preserved for the future. One day modern computers may not run 9X/ME/2K/XP/W7/W10 properly. But DOS seems to always work and I don't think that compatibility will ever die. ISA sound cards have come and gone, PCI sound cards were never quite successful at true SB emulation no matter the support chipsets, and no PCIe sound cards existed that even attempted it that I am aware of unless you've heard of one please list it. The PC internal speaker has always existed on every PC computer that was made since the first 8088 IBM PC. That's why this common sound device denominator is the best start point for support going forward.
Jorpho, try out Mean Streets, Crime Wave, and even Links 386 on a true 386 computer. You will see prior to the actual physical Sound Blaster sound cards that it was quite a feat that Access Software achieved back in the day. The sad thing is Microsoft bought them out.
But since the PC internal speaker is a much simpler and prevalent sound device in every PC machine I think the time to do it might be much less than an NT version.
"Simpler" and "prevalent" does not equate to "easy to program".
Why the constant negativity? No one said this was going to be simple to program and I don't imagine it will be. Did you have the same attitude when DOSBOX was first conceptualized? I bet you are using DOSBOX today if you don't own a proper computer with ISA slots.
The speech program for the Windows 3.1 version was inferior to what was done in DOS. In DOS the digitized music/sound effects does not freeze up the computer.
That's because the DOS programs in question were carefully written from the ground up to specifically avoid that.
Yes with more limited resources and processing power and less know how on top of all that and they accomplished what seemed impossible at the time. You wonder why there wasn't a proper Windows 3.X driver that did it just as smoothly as the DOS variant.
I was able to get the Ensoniq and even SB Live to load the TSR properly.
Yes, the TSR loads on such machines, but that's all it does.
Which is why a pure DOS SB emulator is something that will more important not requiring a physical sound card that even as a PCI was a lousy substitute for the ISA one.
This would indicate DOS games simply must have an ISA slot
It has nothing to do with the presence of an ISA slot; the TSR works properly (with sound) on my TUSL2-C. It is a matter of specific features in the southbridge, as I recall; there have been threads about this before.
I'm aware of that issue. What I'm saying is the ISA slot is a requirement for true SB support. The PCI slot variants even on a supported southbridge were lousy at best. I tested it on a P4 and it still stuttered frequently. Not to mention the successful loading of the SB emulation TSR takes a while on these older systems.
I was hoping due to the more powerful quad cores that the DOS SB Emulation of the Ensoniq or SB Live would have eliminated this stutter.
Nothing running in DOS will have any awareness of multiple cores.
It's not the cores that I'm referring to but I don't think even DOSBOX utilizes multiple cores or does it? I haven't had any very powerful DOS games or tried multiple DOS games simultaneously to test this out. The power of the single core on a Quad core way exceeds a Pentium 4 or even a Pentium 1 90MHz which was when these Ensoniq PCI SB TSRs ran properly. The fact the TSR still ran on the P4 with some tweaking was amazing but like I said before the horrible stuttering makes even the idea of using such a TSR for a PCI sound card pointless vs a true SB ISA card.
Yes DOS games still work even on Z170/Z270. I have been using DOS as part of my bootloader. Try Prince of Persia 1 for DOS. It uses a primitive digitized sound effects for the game but no music. Probably one of the only few games that did it aside from Access Software titles. 4D Sports Boxing does it as well. These programs run at normal speed as well as the sound effects.
Fair enough. I would not have expected that.
Jorpho you can easily try it out and do the same. Find your 98SE and format a bootable USB floppy disk or if you prefer a USB flash drive or SSD and test it out. I currently test this out on a 16GB USB SSD that I partitioned.
POP1 runs just fine but it only uses the PC internal speaker and did have a primitive form of digitized sound effects and not the 1 voice tweeter annoying sounds. I believe during the hour glass sequence it even pipes the music through the PC internal speaker but of course it will never sound as good as the Sound Blaster which is why a later Stage would be piping the audio output to the HDMI Audio out found on the Intel HD Graphics, AMD, and nVidia sound cards while in DOS which should sound better than any Sound Blaster 8-bit ISA sound card at the time.
Jorpho it doesn't sound like you played too many DOS games back in the day or you didn't grow up during that time from your questions?
I'm definitely not the one concocting elaborate fantasies about a "team".
Okay you avoided answering that and I'm not sure why. What was your first computer that you bought? This may perhaps shed light on your position.
I will admit that I don't have a rock-solid grasp of exactly why it would be so complicated to write data to the parallel port or PC speaker while simultaneously running a DOS game intended for use with a Sound Blaster, but I'm quite certain it's not as simple as you say it is.
I appreciate your frankness but again I never stated this would be simple. I'm only outlining what would be the simplest way to go about it. The PC internal speaker would be the first sound output test device and anyone with a PC can try it out. In fact even if later stages of getting the HDMI audio output on the Intel HD Graphics, AMD, or nVidia didn't pan out it would still future proof the DOS SB concept using the PC internal speaker. And if I recall correctly Access Software had plans on adapting your two wire PC internal speaker to output to a regular 3.5 inch connector to hook up to larger speakers to get better audio quality. It was on one of the text files on Mean Streets if I recall. I had printed it out years ago and went to Radio Shack to see if someone could build it. I wish I had ordered a few of these direct from Access Software but I was using a Sound Blaster card then so I didn't think much of it at the time. And the sound quality was improved when hooked to a large boombox. This is how I saw Mean Streets demonstrated the very first time in Hong Kong. This was pre-dominance of Sound Blaster and this game did not support sound cards either but I was still blown away as no other game prior to that had such an extensive intro. And VGA 256 colors in games had just started to take flight from the older EGA 16 colors.
And I'll also admit as well that I'm in a similar boat as you on the programming side for the time being. I didn't quite program in Assembly or C back in the day but I did use BASIC, BASICA, GW-BASIC, and Turbo Basic but I never quite spent enough time in C although I had a programming class for it which I didn't have my heart in it. I did however hack a few games that were protected and removed the protection using a Hex editor called PC Tools. Mean Streets happened to be one of them now that I think about it that I cracked. I got sick of looking for my manual. Today I have several of these in the original box sealed. Back then I got addicted to the Mortal Kombat ][ arcade machine at the time so most of my computer programming courses were neglected although I do recall programming in Turbo Pascal which I hated. 😕
And if you look around there are many people that simply didn't have the programming skills but the ideas. Roberta Williams ring a bell? Anyone recall Steve Jobs? 😢